Supreme Commander United Military
by James Beil
Summary: After the Seraphim War, the Coalition stayed together. However, not all is good in the world-some didn't want unity at all... Contains civilian and military sections, very long.
1. Chapter 1

Supreme Commander

-

United Military

Prologue

X-Day: The Black Sun is fired by the UEF. However, due to a last-minute piece of tactical genius, a Cybran Commander orders all troops to fire upwards. This causes, by a ridiculously unlikely chance, the destruction of the Quantum Gate near Earth. Defied, the UEF can only watch as both Aeon and Cybran forces recall. Almost immediately after, a Quantum Rift opens up on Earth, and the entire planet is subjected to bombing from an unknown source. Death toll is estimated at 100%. QAI is lost, under the control of what is assumed to be the same force that destroyed Earth.

X-Day +11: The now-confirmed Seraphim invaders have crippled the Quantum Gate network, and Evaluator Kael has seized control of the Aeon Illuminate, renaming it the Order of the Illuminate, abandoning previous principles in favour of an alliance with the Seraphim. Isolated, Human worlds rush to defend themselves as the Seraphim begin annihilating Homo Sapiens. Over the next month, the Cybrans are decimated, and Dr. Brackman retreats into the darkest reaches of space.

X-Day +3 Months: Three months after the invasion and the UEF forces have suffered heavy losses. Commander William Hall takes command of the surviving force. The UEF and Cybran, both pushed to the edge, ally and form the Colonial Defence Coalition. Both militaries share a unified command structure. Eventually, Rhiza and the Aeon loyalists join the coalition.

X-Day+1 Year (A): The coalition launches its first offensive, suffering heavy causalities but gaining the first victory against the Seraphim.

C-Day: Over two years after the invasion, the UEF begins construction on Fort Clarke, a new base of operations located on the planet Griffin IV.

C-Day +6 Months: The Seraphim are defeated, and at a great cost. Three of the Coalition's best commanders have been lost to the war; Clarke, Dostya and Fletcher are all dead. Worse still, the Princess has been lost, presumed dead. However, it is not all negative; only a few Seraphim remain in the galaxy to threaten the Coalition, and some broken elements of the Order. Hall, after the Coalition has achieved what is officially labelled as a victory, signs a treaty with certain conditions to ensure that the Infinite War can never happen again.

Cybran, Aeon, and UEF space is amalgamated and all barriers removed: all Cybrans in the UEF are released from the loyalty program, and The Way becomes an officially accepted religion, taught in all schools across the Coalition. However, despite this great unification, racism still abounds and the UEF, having gone from a position of dominance to losing their Cybran slaves and having their children exposed to the UEF, is a source of great loathing of the so-called 'corrupting' other citizens of the Coalition, and this occasionally manifests itself in the form of a racist planetary mayor...

Chapter One

-

Westock

"So, to summarise, by using a lens in the barrel of a laser, we can amplify the damage at the expense of beam width. Tomorrow, I shall discuss how to do this in the real world." She exhaled-after so long having everything she did be the result of her programming, it was a joy even to breathe of her own free will. Susan looked at the wooden desk, on a platform raised ten feet above the rest of the hemispherical room, again furnished with wood, seats with desks in front of them, all crafted with delicate care, by hand. The students had listened intently throughout the lecture, the only sounds being her voice and the scratching of pencils, except for the occasional question. As the students, all intelligent individuals, aged from eighteen to twenty one, finished scribbling down some details, she saw herself in the finely polished pine desk, in the oak veneer. Susan had a fresh face, like so many of those in front of her-not having to think had kept her young, although every moment had been torture. Her dark brown hair hung about her face, framing her oval-shaped head like a gold trim to a pearl or a ring. However, it was not as low as normal-she had, today, for no particular reason, decided to wear it in a ponytail, so that only occasional strands fell about her blue-eyed face.

Those light blue eyes, like a tropical ocean or some such thing, stared back at her in the veneer. But most striking were the red, hair-thin lines along the right side of her face, running along the side of it until a level equal with her right eye, stopping abruptly in a vertical line that crossed her eye, although the thin red lines curved around her eye, not actually intersecting it. The only other physically obvious detail distinguishing her as a Cybran was a Dostya-like interface port on her left temple, although it was hidden underneath hair. When Susan had heard of Dostya's death at the hands of Hex5, she had become very distressed, and had wept for her- in the brief period of freedom she had experienced before Dostya's death, she had become very attached to her, despite only ever reading about her or seeing her on news reports. Indeed, she had cried for several days about the event, and was insistent to the Dean that she would take a day off to go to the state funeral for the Elite Commander. It was taking place here, in Westock, along with the funeral of Fletcher. Although the bodies were destroyed, placeholders could be used-In Dostya's case, it would be the records of her conversations and what Symbiont equipment she had replaced over her lifetime-a few AI chips, and some other sundry gear.

She did not care what was going to be in place of Samantha Clarke or Fletcher's body, because she loathed them, as she did all members of the UEF. While she knew it was stereotyping the United Earth Federation's citizens, she simply could not find it within her to forgive the citizens of the UEF for what they had done, both to her and to her Cybran comrades. After being forced to work to the will of her oppressors for so long, Susan simply could not bear to see them as decent people. It was the most she could do to acknowledge their equality. Dangerously close to starting brooding over the UEF (curiously, Susan felt no such hate for the Aeon), she was approached by one of her students.

He was a nineteen year old, and unusually tall-approximately six foot seven, towering over his comparatively diminutive professor-Susan stood at five foot seven, average height for a woman of her age (something she was loathe to disclose), but was dwarfed by this student. He, too, was a Cybran, the only one in the class. He had blond hair, cut to show his brow, although he did have a very short fringe. His eyes were a chestnut brown, and down the left and right sides of his face were the red wires, more square than those of Susan, but reaching to the same length on both sides of his face (so that they were level with his eyes vertically) and his interface port was on his right temple, unhidden by hair. His voice was fitting of somebody so youthful, with what once was known as a German accent. He was lucky as a Cybran to not have been enslaved by the UEF. "Professor Thatch, that essay you asked for..." He extended his right hand, in which was a folder containing what looked like hastily stuffed papers inside. Susan had to crane her neck to look at the student's face while taking the folder. Looking hastily at a few pages, she replied to him, in a similarly youthful voice, seemingly a trait common to Cybrans.

"Yes...it all seems fine, Miroslav. It does look a little rushed though."

"Well, I'm not a late kind of person."

"It doesn't need to be in for two weeks." Miroslav scratched behind his right ear before continuing.

"Well, it's something to keep me occupied." Miroslav smiled weakly.

"Well, ß, here's something else to keep you occupied-revise plasma weapons. You always have had a blind spot for that."

"Yes, Professor. I'll see you on Thursday." It was Tuesday, and the funerals for the dead commanders were on the following day.

"Oh? Are you not attending tomorrow?" Susan raised an eyebrow.

"I'm going to Commander Dostya's funeral. She was...sort of a hero of mine, so...it's only respectful to say goodbye to her. Without her, we'd probably both be plugged into machines doing maths for someone else." Miroslav avoided saying 'UEF' because he did not resent them, despite everything they had done in the Infinite War. To him, the Coalition represented a chance to leave the past in the past-but not to forget.

During his life before entering the University, Miroslav had been an experiment by the UEF to see how much more effective their Cybran slaves could be if given a first-class education, and so was taken from a group of Cybran civilians captured due to a calculation error, shacked up with some UEF agents with cosmetic treatment to look like Cybrans, and sent through the school system. Although teased constantly by his fellow students and discriminated against by his tutors, he came out of the final school at the end of the Infinite War, and used the liberty leant to him by Hall's policy of unity to join a college, and learnt all he needed to get a degree in Weapons Science at the Fletcher University. He wanted eventually to pioneer the transition of technologies from military to public use, but he still had two years at the Fletcher University before he could even think about that.

Susan replied to her student solemnly. "I'm going to the funeral myself. We both owe a lot to people like Dostya, and Crusader Rhiza. Not to say anything about those who finally gave up fighting each other and started fighting those aliens..." Without them, the war would still be going on-or perhaps the Seraphim would be ruling the galaxy, and man would be extinct. Miroslav realized that the situation was dangerously close to becoming a miserable tar pit, he said goodbye and left, catching up with his select group of friends.

Susan, however, checked her watch. It was a silver-edged digital one, linked to Susan's Cybran implants, but she preferred seeing it for true rather than calling it up with a thought and it appearing briefly in her field of vision. Thirty past two-fifteen minutes until the end of her working day. She sunk into the leather chair behind her desk, opened the laptop built into the desk, disguised by the veneer. As the machine woke up, she opened one of the brass-knobbed drawers, pulled out a thick white wire. At one end, a small needle-like point, which she plugged into the laptop while she logged on the Fletcher network, and then examined the other end of the wire-a round, rather large, short cylinder which became thinner as it joined with the wire. Wiping some hair away with her right hand, Susan exposed the interface on her temple and lightly plugged the wire into her head. She closed her eyes, and red jagged lines on a darker red background filled her vision briefly, as her brain linked with the machine.

Opening her eyes, she exhaled and looked at the screen, opening folders purely by thought. "Thank you, Dr. Brackman." It made organizing things incredibly easy, and due to the modular nature of the wire, she could change the end so that she could access any piece of technology with data storage in this manner. She flicked through her messages, sent either by students (essays or questions in digital form) or other professors-nothing of note, although there was one notice. After work, some of the younger tutors were going to a bar in the Cosmopolitan Zone (the centre of Westock) and everyone was invited. Well, that was her plan for the night solved. She glanced over some student essays, all done to a high calibre, although those submitted by members of the Aeon Illuminate tended to have slightly flowery language. Perhaps, after oration and teaching by Princess Burke, that was only to be expected.

In any case, she did not worry about it. Perhaps at the start of the next lecture, she would say something, although she would have to be politically correct about it. It was probably the only negative thing about the end of the Infinite War; attitudes were still such that criticism was construed as racism. In any case, she wasn't bothered-Susan's students were intelligent, and knew that their professor was not a racist. As long as none of them knew she loathed the UEF, it would be fine. She placed a hand to her temple, grasped the link, and mentally prepared herself to be severed from what was like a sixth sense-disconnecting was always a traumatic experience. She closed her eyes, and that red kaleidoscope-like sight that always was present when she blocked out everything else darkened while she twisted out the plug.

Opening her eyes, everything was normal. She stood, walked over to the coat stand on the other side of the platform, and took her suit jacket from the stand, placed in on over her cream, slightly frilly, shirt. Also, Susan was wearing a pair of black trousers that went with the suit and a pair of two-inch heels. As she did one of the buttons up, one above the bottom of the jacket, there was a banging sound. Turning around, she saw one of the other tutors. Although Susan did not like it, he was seven years her junior, aged twenty nine. He was starting to show the ravages of time, but his green eyes were still in perfect working order.

He was an Aeon, and as such had an Illuminate name; Tyram, although officially he was named Daniel Ether, and occasionally he went by that name. However, he preferred to be known by the name granted to him by the Illuminate. During the Infinite War, he was spiritual advisor to Crusader Rhiza herself. At the end of the Seraphim war, he had taken his chance and began to teach The Way at the Fletcher University. He was a short man, at only five foot eight, but still was taller than Susan. He had light green hair, seemingly a trademark of the Aeon, as Susan knew of no Aeon without the green hair. He was wearing a leather jacket, and green t-shirt and jeans (dyed green by his own hand; the modifications were sort of a hobby of his). Tyram was a devout follower of The Way, and nobody could name a single person he disliked. Indeed, he would help anybody in need, but as Susan approached, he had other things on his mind, which he vocalized. "Susan, are you coming down to the bar with us?"

"Yes, of course. Tomorrow's going to be a hard day, and I need to relax." With that, she walked alongside him, joined with a group of other tutors. The Cosmopolitan Zone was the centre of Westock, and all the buildings were protected under shield generators hidden by hollow sculptures, and they were all very finely built and finished. After an hour or so, Susan left the bar, having enjoyed herself while staying sober. Outside of the Cosmopolitan Zone, however, was nowhere near as good a neighbourhood.

All of the residential structures were large flats each holding about a hundred people. They were all built to a standard UEF pattern, but were still comfortable, built by the unpopular mayor Dr. Paulius Jazcksyz-unpopular amongst all those with a fair sentimentality, because of one policy. Apartheid. He had ordered that after eight o clock, all Cybrans and Aeon stayed within their district, outside of the Cosmopolitan Zone, while UEF citizens had free reign-and the constables had no choice but to enforce the law.

It was this law that restricted Westock, choked its life. And it could not last forever.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter Two

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Coalition Forces

"Volkova, situation report!"

"Stalnyi's forces are holding them back, but we can't do it forever. Gate already!" On a desolate hole of a planet, so ghastly that the colonists had neglected to name it, there was a battle waging. On the only continent on the planet, Seraphim forces were being thrown at a defensive line, a combination of Aeon and UEF turrets, infantry adapted to be static while having improved armour. It was a strange sight, but defensive tactics had changed by an order of magnitude after Dostya was killed by Hex5. Shield generators were layered, turrets stacked so thick that it was impossible to move past them even if they were not firing, in lines twenty thick. It was less than easy to construct, but no commander wanted to suffer the same fate as Clarke or the other deceased commanders. The Infinite and Seraphim wars had taught the Coalition far, far too much about killing and being killed than any civilization ever should know.

"Roger that. Gating three clicks to your north-west. Over and out." The brown and green turf blasted around a light as a form appeared on a large island, and a massive flash faded to reveal an armoured figure, with large spiked shapes emanating from the core of the suit, and red iconography, a spiked triangle-the insignia of the former Cybran Nation, now a part of the Coalition. The head moved slightly, the left arm raised, and a red beam shot from a hole in the barrel of the spiked arm, like a rifle. Small, scarab-like creatures floated from the back of the suit and a similar red beam scanned over a glowing mass of metal, while quickly replicating metal, carried along the beam as energy, placed itself into pre-programmed locations, forming intricate workings, the inside of a power generator. Before long, the ACU and its scarabs had constructed about forty of these structures, and wires hummed with power, transmitting it by microwave to the ACU.

Gregor looked at the screens in his ACU; the cockpit was bathed in red light. Tiny screens into which an interface plug was linked, feeding into Gregor's left temple, showed data gathered from cameras all over the battlefield; a torn up grassland with conflict everywhere. Gregor leaned back in the black leather cockpit chair (a little extravagance paid for by his inordinately large pay check-even in war, men will ask for cash) and closed his eyes. His blue-eyed vision was replaced by the red circular pulsing, heartbeat-like interface display common to all Cybrans. Through his mind flickered strong signals from somewhere else..._HQ. They're sending someone through. Better roll out the welcome wagon. _Without opening his eyes, feeling the ACU as an extension of his own form, the black-haired Cybran moved his suit's limbs, his scarabs helping him build a factory; within seconds intricate machines, like those in the scarabs on Gregor's ACU, were constructing soldier-machines, four legged constructs with a pyramid pointing forward atop them, mounting four lasers. The number four was a constant theme throughout the construction, a sign of art amongst Brackman's capacity for functionality. They were being churned out at roughly two a minute, and after five minutes (and ten Mantis' later, for that was their official designation) there was another, powerful pulse. Gregor opened his eyes, but the red pulsing was still a peripheral vision, an image in his head at the same time as those fed to him by his eyes, looking at both the screens and the viewscreen that gave Gregor a view on his immediate surroundings.

A Greek accent came over the communication system, both over standard and Cybran-only wavelengths-Cybran-only because only Cybrans could understand the code of electronic pulses. "This is Support Commander Selena White, reporting. Commander Gregor-"

"Don't call me that, Sel."

"Sorry, Laser, what are my orders?"

"Move a few clicks south-east. Establish a naval base. Any problems, I'll know about it, but Volkova and Brickman won't, so tell them." Gregor 'felt' the map his ACU had generated. "The Seraphim don't even know we're over here, Sel. Let's keep it that way. Laser out." Laser was Gregor's nickname, for reasons only revealed during combat. While Gregor was fast, precise, and knew exactly what he was doing, Selena was less than precise.

She was an unofficial commander, actually studying the art of war under Gregor, but he stated often that there is no better training then being shot at. To that end, he had requisitioned an ACU from Dr. Brackman and had presented it to Selena after she had passed 50% of the course. It showed how desperate the Coalition was to finish off the Seraphim and the Order that they would let a 20 year old girl risk a valuable piece of machinery (not to mention her life) fighting them. But she didn't concentrate of that; instead, she was too busy setting up power generation. Unlike her tutor, she preferred to gate with all schematics the ACU had on-board ready to be built. To this end, she had mounted a Tech3 construction module onto her ACU before gating in. Before long, there were extensive fusion plants arrayed before her, and mass fabricators linked to them with thick, glowing red wires. Closing her eyes and seeing the red, circular pulsing of energy from the ACU, Selena gathered the information she needed into her skull.

The buildings were producing about 300 SCU of mass a second and over 12,000 megawatt hours of energy at the same rate. Performing an instantaneous calculation, she decided she would be able to build an experimental in less than three minutes. Hastily, she and her scarabs erected a factory, which began turning out Tech3 engineering robots. She, in turn, used Cybran communications to order them to continue constructing a resource production network, while she turned the ACU's hips to aim her construction beam upwards. The shape appearing in the sky, interlaced with glowing red, was like a giant version of one of the scarabs helping her to build it-a Soul Ripper gunship. However, this was the Soul Ripper Mk II-crafted by Brackman; it contained an in-built stealth field generator, designed for engaging the Seraphim, who relied totally on radar mounted on their soldiers. Even when they were being blown apart, they would not see it. The artistry of it tickled the young officer.

It was deliciously cruel, she thought, as the Soul Ripper formed, the shining ebony-coloured surface interlaced with red criss-cross wires. It glowed before the stealth field kicked in, and it became like a heat haze, just looking like air shifting a little. The computer onboard sent tiny electrical impulses to Selena and Gregor, both 'feeling' it's presence. With a thought, she sent it on its way, invisible to the Seraphim eye-only if there was a direct sighting would they ever see even a haze-the hull was vibrating at an incredible speed. As the huge beetle flew off, a message came from Crusader Stalnyi, his image appearing on-screen-his blue eyes aged by war, his bald, 57 year old head on a dependable pair of shoulders-a soldier Rhianna Burke would be proud to know was protecting the current Princess-the former warrior, the great Rhiza. She was a successor Burke would have been proud of, and more than capable of leading her subjects. "This is Stalnyi." His voice had a slight French twist. "What is your status?"

"This is Acting Commander Selena White, sending experimental gunships to harass. Laser, what is your status?"

"This is Commander Daniels. Currently suppressing the Seraphim flank with heavy artillery support. What is your situation, old man?" Although a little evil, the reference to Stalnyi's age was meant in jest. It is perhaps worth noting that the name Stalnyi was granted to him by the Illuminate, and perhaps only Princess Burke knew his real name. It was because of this that Stalnyi was so fanatical about killing the Seraphim, to do his final duty by his Princess. Soon, he would be too old to fight for Princess Rhiza, and she would give him a new duty. _A desk job. _He concentrated on his reply to Gregor.

"Commander Daniels, shut it. The attacks have let up-I think our friends are heading your way. Volkova and I are sending forces to deal with these alien bastards now. Stalnyi out." Volkova began speaking, with dark, almost ebony hair and pale ice-blue eyes. She was 27, but looked younger-war had failed to take away her looks in the same manner that General Samantha Clarke had looked youthful right up until the second she died, next to her President. Her voice was painfully reminiscent of Dostya, but Gregor and Selena forced themselves to listen anyway.

"This is Junior Commander Natasha Volkova. I have several Navrons firing, but my sensors tell me that the Seraphim front line is too strong for us to break. We will need a supporting attack."

"Understood Junior Commander. I have sent over a Soul Ripper and am constructing a Monkeylord, ready to attack on your signal." The green-eyed Selena spoke, red circuitry flaring up a little.

"This is Commander Daniels, I have..." he closed his eyes briefly, felt around for the impulses, and opened them as the red lines across his face glowed. "...415 Mantis units awaiting orders. Shit! Cancel orders! Cancel orders! Detecting seven experimental-class units en route...too many..." The link went down. Selena, worried that her teacher might now be dead, hurriedly contacted HQ.

"Give me a report on Commander Daniels, now!"

"We've lost all contact. Either he's hiding or he's KIA. His base is getting absolutely bitched, though. Get ready for an attack to your north, ma'am. I think the Seraphim want to roll out a real welcome wagon." Then the link went down there, too.


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter Three

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Funeral March

It was hard to think of something to think of something to wear to the funeral. It would have to be black, yes, but what to wear? Susan played briefly with the idea of a long dress, but she was both too short for that, and it seemed disrespectful for some reason. She had slept very poorly, and so it had taken a while to settle on a black jacket and skirt arrangement. Tying her hair into a bun, she unashamedly showed off her Cybran implants for the entire world to see. It was fitting that the weather was pretty atrocious. The cold rain battered on the glass in her bedroom, frugal, as she preferred it. The wallpaper throughout the habitation was a light brown, the carpets a solid navy blue. It was not a nice place, but clearly this was how Jazcksyz wanted it. He was, at the end of the day, a racist, and had he and Hall been switched, the Infinite War would still be raging. A citywide publication had gone to everyone to bring something personal to lay by the memorial, and Susan had placed in her leather bag a small hard drive, one onto which she had copied all of the memories from her days as a techno-slave involving Dostya. She often wandered exactly why it was that she had never been given the chance to flee with Brackman, since her memories were lost in a tumult of information since then, but had she been born into this slavery? Or had she been captured? Very few of her people remembered anything of her youth, but Susan could remember a face, like hers, perhaps a little younger. Maybe her mother. Likely, she would never know. But, she was more concerned with the funeral she was going to have to go to.

As she waited by the window, Tyram's dark, tinted car rolled up outside. The roads were wide enough for five cars at a time, and crossings didn't slow motors down, because they were bridges over the roads onto the paths at either side. Entering the elevator, Susan met the theology professor outside, umbrella up, shining proudly the Cybran insignia. Neither of them looked overly happy, and they slipped silently into the small car. Rotors began to fire up as the craft hovered a few inches above the road, and it drifted towards Unity Park. Leaving the car outside like most of those attending the funeral, Susan and Tyram quickly found a seat-there were tens of thousands, in rows, each row above the other ever so slightly so that it was possible, in the hemispherical seating arrangement, to see the podium, behind which three caskets lay before a graniteglass case, each one flying a flag. Clarke's bore the flag of the UEF, Dostya's the symbol of the Cybran nation. Fletcher had not been afforded the honour of being honoured in such a way, instead replaced by the casket of the Princesses' chief bodyguard, Vira. As the rain became heavier, the steady pile of objects around each casket grew, even as Susan and Tyram left their seats to give their donations to those who had died to protect them. Or to enslave or butcher them. As they sat back down, General and President Hall came to the stand. The aging politician had a grim look on his face, and sat next to his empty seat was Mayor Jazcksyz. He seemed slightly nervous. The Aeon and Cybrans there would have been happy to kill the overweight mayor there, to tear his bald hypocritical head from its double-chinned neck. The UEF members of the Coalition were not so violent in their dislike of him, but regarded him as an incompetent arse anyway.

The grey-haired general spoke into the microphone, his enhanced voice booming. "Ladies and gentlemen, we all know why we are here. We are here to honour those who died to protect us against the Seraphim. We are here to honour their sacrifice, but also to condemn any spirit of treachery. In the centre you see the casket of Elite Commander Dostya. She is unusually lucky in that we recovered her body, but she was not killed by the Seraphim. She was killed by a fellow Cybran, and that is the worst of all. Fletcher, who was posthumously discharged, even as we stood on the brink of victory, was too-narrow minded and racist to see past his own bigotry, and attempted to destroy the Commander present at the destruction of the Quantum Rift." He paused, pulling something from his pocket. "So, I wish to urge all of you, continue your lives, but do not forget what darkness we have pulled ourselves from. None of us wishes to return to that time."

_Except the superior race, of course. _Paulius' mind ticked over as he listened to the naive President speaks. Didn't he understand that the Cybrans and Aeon could not be trusted? Did he not know that they wanted nothing but total control? It was his measures, and his measures alone, keeping Westock in one piece. UEF minds were better, uncorrupted by madness or machinery. What he was doing was keeping them apart for their own good. In the day, they could be sensible, but what destruction could be wreaked by a drunken mob of Aeon, or Cybrans who had formed a node and had an error in their behaviour AI? Unknowing, in the centre of the mob, a Cybran waited. Red criss-crossed circuitry covered the left half of his face, and there was a bulge under his shirt, and his right eye was a little too red, even for a Cybran. There was something in his head.

_Take two paces forwards, slowly. _He did so.

_Activate the mechanism. _With a mental flick of the wrist, he activated it. A clock began to count down.

_Move to the front of the group. _He did so, and the glow in his eyes became more subtle. The voice went away, and he collapsed. Two military guard moved over rapidly, Sub-Commander Kieran and Commander Lesotho grabbing his arms, supporting him. Kieran unbuttoned the man's shirt, to ease his breathing. His eyes widened as he saw the bulge.

The bomb detonated with a flash.


End file.
